Dwarf Port Wine Magnolia Michelia Coco (Magnolia)

Michelia coco carries its flowers low and half hidden under the leaves: small nodding cups of thick creamy petals that open towards evening and drop within a day or two. What they leave behind is the perfume, a heavy banana and gardenia scent that fills a courtyard after dark. The plant itself is a dense rounded evergreen shrub that branches from low down and holds its leaf right to the base, so it clips into a hedge without going hollow underneath.

Put it where you will smell it

Individual flowers are short lived and the scent peaks in the evening, so position decides whether this plant earns its place. Beside a back door, under a bedroom window, along the path you walk at night, or in a large pot next to an outdoor table. Planted at the far end of a block it is just a neat green shrub. For a clipped hedge set plants about a metre apart; for an informal screen allow 1.5 metres and let the naturally rounded habit close the gaps. Part shade to full sun both work, with some afternoon shade holding better leaf colour in hot inland gardens.

Cold is the limit

Treat this as a subtropical to warm temperate plant. It suits frost free coastal gardens, and in cooler districts it only works in a sheltered north facing pocket out of the wind. Two things go wrong in cold country. Frost burns the young growth and takes the flower buds before they open, so you keep the shrub and lose the entire reason for buying it. And heavy soil that stays cold and wet through winter stalls the plant outright: growth stops, the leaves yellow from the older wood forward, and it can sit there for a season without moving. Give it soil that drains freely but stays evenly moist, dug through with compost, mulched over the surface roots, and build the bed up above the surrounding level on clay.

Clipping without losing the flowers

Cut after a flush of flower in the warm months, tipping shoots back to a leaf node to thicken the plant up. A hedge takes two or three light trims across the growing season, but stop by the end of summer, because growth pushed late is still soft when the first cold nights arrive and it is the first thing to burn. Feed in spring and again in mid summer with a slow release fertiliser for acid loving plants, and top up the mulch rather than digging around the base. Yellowing between the leaf veins usually means the ground is either too alkaline or too cold and wet.

Coco or one of the others

White Champaca shares the perfume but grows as an upright tree, so take that one when you want scent carried above head height or a tall boundary planting. Coco is the one that puts the flowers at nose level in a hedge, a courtyard or a pot. Set against the evergreen magnolias such as Little Gem, coco has the softer leaf and far more perfume with much less presence, while Little Gem gives you the hard glossy foliage, more height and tolerance of frost. Both michelias here are frost tender, so in a cold district the trade is a real one: take an evergreen magnolia and give up the scent.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 5 sizes, from 140mm up to 500mm, priced from $16.95 to $3899.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to choosing a magnolia.